Question for people who don't believe in a god?

exorcisms are explained easily. People who believe they are possessed, have a mental illness of some sort.

The only exorcisms that ever really work are on people that want help. No one has ever performed an exorcism on someone and had it work when that person didn't want their "demon" to be gone. I have seen some done for kids who behaved badly and those kids didn't want to change so they didn't.

Basically my thought is something like the placebo effect. They really want to get better and the preacher saying that it is a demon forcing you to be bad takes the blame off of them. Then the preacher will perform an exorcism and then the person has no reason not to get better if they truly believe it.

Like I said it is my opinion. Nothing supernatural can be proven or disproven.

There are certain mental conditions which can make a person act possessed. They fully believe that they are possessed, and the only way to break their hallucinations is to play out their fantasy.

In these cases, exorcisms work. But, cases in which the 'victim' is not suffering from these delusions, exorcisms are dangerous and sometimes deadly.

This is why every 'possessed' person should be medically evaluated before having an exorcism performed.

Of course they're fake. An exorcism is, by definition, the extraction from a person of some sort of supernatural entity, yes? So how could you expect people who do not believe in such entities to hold any belief about the nature of exorcisms other than that they are fake? That's not to say the people involved don't think it's real, but (and again I feel like I'm stating the obvious) we think the people involved are wrong.

It's not really something I'm interested in, but, just off the top of my head and quite simply, people who are mentally disturbed and happen to believe in demons and devils. How would it be any different from someone who's schizophrenic?

If these people were treated with sedatives, they would be rendered unconscious like anyone else. How would that be possible if they were possessed by demons? People who are "possessed" may need a preacher or a priest because their own beliefs may interfere with allowing them to return to a "normal" state of mind without the religious officiant's interference, even when they're in a state of mental confusion, but medical health people should definitely be involved.

An atheist does not normally accept the existence of demons and angels. I would not say they're faked, but these are people with serious mental problems. People have died in exorcisms who could have been treated with medication and therapy.

People have been KILLED from exorcisms (not just Christian ones) . They do not work. Those people are mentally ill. They need to go to hospitals. Just because someone preforms an "exorcism" it does not prove the existence of demons.

Yea, I would have to say it is more a physiological thing. Most exorcisms I have been close to (but not in) have been one person not acting the way the bible says they should and pretty much tortured by a priest till exhaustion.

Ergo, though I believe in angel-esque things, exorcisms are nothing but horrid to me.

How is it that atheists are never possessed by these demons? By atheists, I mean people that don't believe in gods etc, not people who are just angry with their god or haven't been to church lately.

It takes a certain frame of mind, eg. brainwashed, to believe in gods and the same frame of mind to believe in demons.

Mis/undiagnosed mental illness couples with religious belief... Exorcisms are simply torture perpetrated against a mentally ill people by religious zealots who are too brainwashed to seek proper mental health care... ...